I want to acknowledge Ron Hock. I had put it off for too long, so I spent a day sharpening some plane blades and, in particular, all my spokeshave blades. Among the menagerie I have a Stanley 63 and 64, the 1 3/4” wide blades of which are interchangeable. I noticed that I had reached an area of severe-enough pitting on the back of one of the blades to render it useless (chipping on the edge) and the other blade is very short and getting close to the end of its life. Since acquiring my first LN Boggs flat sole I’ve been wanting to upgrade some of my other spokeshaves with LNs, but they’ve been out of stock for months. After speaking with yet another great person there, it became apparent that the spokeshaves I want will not be back in production for some months. So I decided to order a replacement blade from Ron Hock.
When I received the blade I discovered that it wouldn’t retract enough, the edge stuck out past the mouth by almost 1/8”! I tried it on both the 63 and 64 with the exact same results. These are pre-WWII Made in USA Stanleys, not some knockoff.
I called Ron’s business and left a message. Soon after the man himself called me back. Ron and I discussed the issue for about 15 minutes; he had never encountered this and told me to return the blade along with the spokeshaves so he could check his specs and would regrind the blade and make it right.
Less than a week later the reground blade and my spokeshaves arrived. After minimal work on the back and a brief honing, I couldn’t be happier. Mind you, he sent me a prepaid Priority Mail shipping label to return the blade and spokeshaves to him, and returned them to me via Priority Mail as well. All things considered he probably lost money on this transaction, but, as promised, Ron Hock made it right and gained a repeat customer for life.
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